Stress and Greed
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Oh, to be clear, I bought the first pair in person. There's no way I'd buy shoes blindly online, at least not for myself. I leave that up to the expert of the household in such matters, who, it must be said, has a very modest number of pairs for someone whose prime hobby/pastime/obsession is a form of fashion.
No, I bought the replacement shoes online because I knew that exact fit and make and model was perfect for me and my humungous first metatarsal head. Shit, and I just remembered: I bought the wrong pair the first time. Looked exactly the same on the site, but they didn't have quite as much give. They fit, but they're literally back-ups. I have really weird feet and legs, the latter probably self-inflicted. I remember wearing inserts as a kid, really painful things meant to restore my arches. They had to be made to fit, and were as I recall completely rigid. I also tiptoed constantly (probably got told I was too loud a few too many times which easily translated in my 4 year old brain into 'must tiptoe constantly') which means my calf muscles were and are extremely taut -- so once a week I had to see a physiotherapist who'd 'massage' those muscles for an hour and I put that word in inverted commas because 'torture' would be closer to the truth. And then at some point I just stopped giving a fuck and decided this is who I am. I simply can't touch my toes with straight legs, which is why I went with a martial art with the lowest demand for flexibility for years. Then I developed heat-triggered hives in late high school, forcing me to quit that. My lower back started to give in my mid 20s. And I 've had pretty severe but now thankfully managed Crohn's since 2013. On the bright side, I have such a weird panoply of non-terminal ailments that I'd probably not have been sent to Vietnam, had I been born in America in the late 40s early to mid 50s. __ To bring this back onto topic, which I think is an interesting one beyond any superficial buyer's remorse, I find the notion of sufficient wealth extremely fragile. The Vimes Boot Theory refers to a certain type of wealth sufficiency where a person can afford to spend more now to spend less later. But there is no way that is what we consider 'wealthy' most of the time. That's a few layers above that, where you CAN afford to spend less but are sort of expected to not. As a simple example, we can talk about upkeep on a house -- you can't just give someone with nothing a house and expect things to go well. It costs money just to own one, never mind upkeep or disposal. And the more impressive the house, the more one is expected to put into it. And I think by the time you reach that layer of wealth, 'sufficiency' has gone right out the window. You might maintain a pretence of humility and frugality but behind the scenes you very likely have financial advisors doing their best to grow that wealth -- or you're doing the same on the sly. It's very rare to find someone who is both self-made AND knows their personal threshold for wealth sufficiency. Equally, very rare to find someone who inherits or has some other windfall and also knows that threshold. The former is driven by need, the latter by ignorance. For the record, the last figure given in the US for wealth sufficiency, i.e. enough coming in that you simply don't have to worry about money but not so much that you have to constantly worry about it, is around $400k PA. Pretty paltry figure when we talk about 'wealth' these days. In a society with more public benefits, that number plummets. Which is also ironic because we have no shortage of corrupt rich fucks from societies with more public benefits. Which is to say: I don't think something as simple as an economic or political model can keep people from being greedy and stressed about it.
Off Topic shit about my position on 'wealth', 'stress' and 'greed'
There is a trick to sufficient wealth, and I think my father stumbled into it. Not for himself -- he was always stressed, had a terrible marriage, drank a lot, all the usual 'successful businessman in the 80s' cliches -- but for his kids. We were raised fairly poor (everything he made went back into the business), but by my late teens the family had nice cars and a nice house. But also by then, I'd worked cash in hand jobs and later some retail for years. There was no moment of revelation where I was like 'omg we're rich I can quit my job and live off a trust fund' because there was no trust fund. There was just this vague idea of 'the business is doing well'. By the time the truth came out via a messy as hell divorce, I was mid 20s and still thought a thousand bucks was a lot of money (still do in most cases). Mum got a large cash sum (which she invested) and Dad got the assets. We kids got a 'smaller' sum to invest -- enough to live off the dividends humbly OR to supplement grander plans. Knowing I'm pretty much useless, I went the humble route.
(and yes, this whole mess sort of coincided with the beta of PoE, and yes, my support of GGG was the biggest 'stupid' thing I did with my 'inheritance', by far) So I don't pull in 400k PA but I do own my house and car and I don't have to worry about bills. I can afford to pursue my hobbies, to literally play PoE all day if I so desired (I so do not). I am what in less enlightened times would be called a gentleman of leisure. BUT the moment I start thinking like one is the moment it all comes crashing down, because the key to maintaining it is to *not touch the investments*. I've had to convince myself it's not my money to do so, that when I die it'll get passed down to my nieces and nephews, at least in the same form as I received it. I'm just skimming the top, so to speak. If I had a kid of my own, I'd live a completely different lifestyle -- I'd work, for a start (I had a pretty secure office job when all the shit went down). Of course. But I don't, because as I said, I'm pretty much useless. And financially I live a stress-free life, 'bringing in' less than $100k USD a year. Because that's the final lesson of sufficient wealth: it's not what you make, it's what you don't have to pay. This is related to why so many lotteries winners fuck it up: they go for the lump sum and shoot for the stars, rather than look at the more 'modest' yearly payout as a key to sustained stress relief. Offer me $10m AUD before tax or a $2m AUD house with all bills paid for life and I won't hesitate to pick the latter. (For the record, a $2-3m house in Australia can range from 'family size' (3bed 2bath 2car) in a coastal area to a McMansion (5-7bed 4bath 4+car) a bit further inland; the national median is just under $1m AUD. ATM AUD $1=72c US) Sure, you can DO more with $10m, but would you? So many people would say 'yes!' and then piss it away. We've all seen it a million times. I'm wealthy with the one thing not even billionaires seem to have: time, and you'd better believe I waste most of it. I'm not greedy but I am wasteful. :) But I do so without pissing away the actual wealth, because I was raised modestly and have a very low threshold for happiness: internet connection, decent PC, a console or two with a nice big telly, a date night here and there, and pre-Covid, the resources to travel for a few weeks once a year or so. I can have these and not worry about whether I can afford the bills or not. Which is why I believe I have sufficient wealth for happiness but not so much as to be stressed. Of course this is all extremely privileged discussion but I wasn't always so privileged and I remember taking boloney sandwiches into Disneyland because tickets in were almost all we could afford. I'm speaking purely from a position of someone who knows how lucky they are without having to look at the numbers to prove it. I wish everyone could be as lucky as me, but part of being as lucky as me is also being as unambitious and lazy as me. I'd say when we met, I was probably richer than Chris Wilson, but I knew that wasn't going to last long. I recognised where he was at when we crossed paths because I'd seen it before: the modest living, the sparse furniture, the scrimping...but also the growing business, the big ideas. The ambition. You could just tell that one day, before too long, he was going to be worth tens of millions, if not hundreds. And you could also tell none of that would change him, because it was all going to happen through the lens of his passion, that one project that was his everything. To this day I don't consider him greedy. I think the demands of being owned by someone else has shifted the stress from personal responsibility to 'making rent' (curious that the latter has resulted in more 'greedy' looking mtx pushing and pricing), but he was never in the game for the money and nothing as basic as a lot more of it will change a person's core personality. At worst, the wealth becomes a sort of self-medication for all that stress. A reward too easily self-administered. And that's 'at worst'. I was always surprised when he didn't take the cash and run (noting that chances are this particular deal wouldn't allow for that). That's what most people would do -- I've seen plenty of super passionate business owners take a deal because, fuck, they've more than earned it. It's what I would have done, no matter how much I might love my work. I don't think it's entirely healthy to not know when to let go, when to say 'yes, I have done my job, I have missed countless nights of sleep, gained this much stress weight...YES, now I have earned this time off'. But then again, I've never been a workaholic, which is where this whole notion of 'stress, greed and wealth' gets really tangled. For me, wealth is a key to minimising stress because I have no greed. But for a workaholic, wealth is more like proof that all that stress paid off, and there is a sort of greed in not recognising how unhealthy that is. Pity the workaholic who never sees that proof, the treadmill grinder stuck in some sad stratum deluded into thinking with just one more year they might make the next promotion from middle middle middle management to middle middle upper management. Can a workaholic ever truly be sufficiently wealthy? Can they ever be truly happy outside of doing the one thing that stresses them? I'd say a workaholic would find these questions baffling. Like they're in some alien language from the planet Blob. Is workaholism a disease, an illness? Or do we just use that portmanteau for fun? Are all addictions bad? Is workaholism real or do we just call it that because the idea that a person feels they NEED to work incessantly to be satisfied is inherently distasteful? ..This, friends, is true sufficient wealth: having the sheer lack of responsibility to be able to ask such stupid questions in the first place, and then move on before needing to find the answers. ^_^ https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable. Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on Apr 26, 2022, 11:46:19 PM
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I didn't have money for martial arts when I was a school kid, but hundred of dollars for a uniform seems suspicious to me, a t-shirt in shopping mall is $10+ for reference.
(I wasted many money, few hundred dollars on Cosmic Break game which shut down on about 2021, and reopened on Steam on 2022 in which we lose all our microtransactions, and those mtx are like what POE forum players says about POE mystery box, predatory practice on vulnerable victims whom have no financial impulse control, except that Cosmic Break is way worse, the whole gameplay is moba arena, meaning every game match forces you to rethink whether you should buy another lottery ticket that may or may not give you the best fighting bot, it is as the Cosmic Break fans have said, these lottery bots are so overpowered, they ended up killing the whole franchise. You might think of it as an overstatement, but if you look at youtube, 1 lottery bot can kill 10 free to play bots. This is the most regretful purchase of my life, because I did not even got the lottery bots and there is this sense of insecurity when other teens are spending money on girlfriends but here I am spending money on gaming, it was a huge humiliation to me that I have never told anyone about my Cosmic Break spendings until today.) If I have $10 million, I wouldn't even spend more than $1 million even until the day I die, I have adapted to a frugal lifestyle that changing my spending habits is a pain in my head, my brother bought me a $100 birthday cake and it gives me a migraine. I have tons of time even at the moment when I was a kid, I was already smart and conscious, I already knew I was going to screw up my whole life, I knew that it is foolish to think I would work for my whole life like everyone else when I becomes an adult, I need to have a solution ASAP but instead, I make the same mistake everyone always make, let the older me solves all the problem. I have rethought my whole life in multiple different scenarios. And these is one particular scenario that could have changed my whole life, if I start eating breads and eggs to save money when I was a kid but is already conscious about finance, I would have save 20 years x 365 days x ( $4 meals x 2 meals a day - $1 bread and egg meal per day ) = $51,100 dollars saved. But there is no point in shaming my younger self for not being financially smart, I have a weird family culture in which we do not spend big money on anything except foods, but then it's not so weird for my peers, for those $4 meals are just standard meals from coffee shops and not from restaurants. I have horrible internet and PCs but good console throughout my life, that it becomes important that I learn to make my own DIY PC, it was hard for an idiot like me, but when it succeeded, when my PCs lasted 10 years, when the graphic card scalping started and I made a PC that do not needs a graphic card, I could only imagine the thousands of dollars I have saved. I solved my internet issues by staying in schools even on saturdays and sundays until the security guards finally throw me out :). I never solved the internet issue, I simply bought my own wifi rather than use my family's wifi, and it seems to be much more stable now. I have never been to Disneyland or traveled to another country. My mum loves to cook Marmite rice Porridge for her kids despite her kids complaining about it every meal. Only when I grew up, I realized how cheap Marmite was, but damn, you could have just cooked plain rice Porridge for us, mom. I assumed Chris left after selling POE and was surprised when I see players are still insulting Chris on forum, if it was me, I would have took the money and left, and if I was as talented as Chris, I would have make another game, something like POE but avoiding all the copyright issues. People in my country are workaholics but not by choice, a Nasi Lemak, rice with one chicken wing costs $2 back then, now it costs $4, but everyone's salary remained the same, then they says they are going to increase tax by 3%. When the citizens complained, they are lectured with eat cheaper meals instead like fish, which is about $6 for a raw fish without rice and unseasoned, these people are living in another world. This whole newspaper saga woke me up, when I realized I am not the only one complaining about the economy and inflation, I realized I am not facing an imaginary challenge, the trouble have already entered my house doorsteps right now. I spent most of my lifetime killing stress and greed with free to play games and card games, sometimes I fell into some lottery games, Cosmic Break, Pokemon and MTG cards, sometimes I fell into huge time-sinking games...POE. But seriously, what is the point of living if not to do what you love? I dun need friends or girlfriends when I already have Japanese comedy shows and Korean Running Man on YouTube that can make me laugh. |
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Multigenerational poverty is one of the things I'd like to see extinct in my lifetime. We have the tools to track biobehavioural markers and determinants of vulnerable families: mental health, substance use registries, clinical data. We also have the capacity for universal mandatory public education to break the cycles of mistrust and stigmatization that trap entire families in poverty. We have lavish specialist programs in SOME schools to provide intensive supports and services to children with fairly serious special needs. What we don't have is enough guts to say "I bet these folks over here who never finished primary school who are raising kids on the streets might like a shot at services".
Instead, we have kids growing up with treatable learning disorders and mental health problems, but who don't even know they have them, all they know is "why does everything suck so bad for me". They are reaching adulthood and aging out of the foster system, the IEP system, and other programs designed at helping kids with special needs. Nobody magically grows out of their ADHD or PTSD once they graduate HS or turn 18 or leave home. The money has to come from somewhere to continue these programs, right? Well, considering that some of that money could come from preventing hospitalizations, legal and criminal problems, and lost productivity by pre-emptively spending it on continuing programs that work. And in doing so, you now have adults who are successfully integrated into the economy and educated about their needs and those of their peers, and their children, should they become parents. And rather than the mistrust and fear of the system from being surprise-visited by CFS because your child hasn't been to school in a month, they have access to continued family supports that aim to bridge the way towards another generation of functional, successfully coping adults. [19:36]#Mirror_stacking_clown: try smoke ganja every day for 10 years and do memory game
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...I have to say, I don't see how Marmite would improve rice porridge. I sometimes live off that shit (we Cantonese peasants call it 'jook') because it's cheap and goes a LONG way, but I'd rather put a bit of salt and soy in than Marmite/Vegemite. That just sounds...I dunno, acquired taste I guess. Nutritional value might also be a factor there.
While it's true that a t-shirt can be quite cheap, the benefit of a not-cheap uniform comes back to the Vimes Boot theory. The initial cost was significant but the quality meant that you wore it day in, day out, five days a week, and that shit survived where a cheap t-shirt almost certainly would not. I'm not saying the cost and the quality were equal; chances are there was mark-up precisely because it was mandatory. But school uniforms, at least here, are typically more durable than a cheap t-shirt from the mall. Not to mention that awful social pressure you see with non-uniform schools: you can immediately spot who's rich and who's poor when there's no uniform, and that can form life-long scars in terms of torment and bullying. It might be superficial and easily debunked but at least at face value, a school uniform can be a level playing field. I used to envy kids on American TV with their wear-anything rules, but at some point I made the connection between that freedom and the constraints of resources. Kids have enough to worry about without something as fucking petty as who wears what to school I think. I love uniforms now. I love the way we seem to change who we are and how we think and behave when we put one on, because self-image is in some ways who we are. But I agree that when they're premium price, I start to suspect there are some shenanigans going on. Still, Vimes Boot theory -- even if the ongoing cost of something 'cheap and flimsy' is as vague as 'emotional well-being due to being a target for economically-based bullying and ostracisation'. ___ Weird thing about PoE as a f2p is that it attracted some pretty well off people as its early and ongoing supporters, despite its f2p nature being likely to attract those who can't or don't want to spend upfront -- and yet it demands a decent PC and definitely has some hidden costs the deeper you get into the rabbit hole of its insidiously addictive endgame loop. But it's still a very fair f2p overall, and it brought together people from both extremes of the wealth/poverty spectrum rather than divided them, because it doesn't have a pay to win aspect. Those of us of means who supported typically did so because we wanted to help, or got addicted collecting supporter titles, or whatever else. Never because we felt it would be for our personal gain over poorer people. And so you can have a situation where a multi-millionaire can be chatting with someone barely making rent over a topic they mutually love or hate *without* the financial gap ever becoming relevant or even obvious. OTOH supporters love to wear their badges and show off their avatars so it's not like it's all that hidden by default. Still, it's a nice change from so many other games where whales win and freeloaders do not. Period. The only argument there in favour of f2p is that at least the freeloaders get to play the vast majority of the game 'for free', which is a sort of winning but not quite as rewarding a win as shitting all over someone in pvp because you put more money in to get the resources to do so. __ Multigenerational anything in an economic sense was meant to fuck off when we got rid of the feudal system, but of course that was never going to be the case. Nepotism is alive and well; inherited poverty is too. And the really awful thing is I don't think any 'one' person can fix it. Not for all the wealth in existence, because it's so much more than a financial issue. It's too deeply ingrained in our basic ideas of 'success' and 'failure', of taking care of your own. We are traipsing dangerously towards some very unwelcome C words here getting in the way of your honestly great suggestions regarding social services reform (which I think is the crux of what you're proposing), so I'll leave that at that. https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. |
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" Well, if you stretch the meaning of improvement a bit, you could say that one improvement is that it will make every other rice pudding you ever have taste even better in comparison. |
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Ah. The old 'you don't know joy until you know suffering' technique. That's some hard love, man.
https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. |
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I was referring to uniform for learning martial arts, I do have school uniforms.
I joined a Basketball club in school, I was not wearing a basketball jersey, so I ended up playing with the others that is not wearing a basketball jersey too. Which all sounds fun, until at a scary moment, when the students not wearing basketball jersey found out they are not given attendance points for that school club making it looks like we are skipping compulsory school club on our graduation certificate. They got angry but I didn't, I was just there for the free basketball, free basketball hoop and friends. Very off topic but I seem to find girls in school uniform more attractive than outside clothes when back then I thought they looked ugly. Last edited by mina97#5184 on Apr 27, 2022, 7:41:09 AM
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" No kink shaming here. Go on and live your best life. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln |
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Depends. What if your kink is political or religious?
Oh. Boy. Haha, that's my cue to boogie. Ja na. https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Huh. My mace dude is now an actual cultist of Chayula. That's kinda wild. |
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